


Allow Me to Exaggerate a Memory or Two

by tothewillofthepeople



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mornings, Spoilers for TRK
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 14:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6709039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tothewillofthepeople/pseuds/tothewillofthepeople
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Adam was nervous like this, faced with early-morning Gansey and with the promise of early-morning Blue looming on the horizon. He tried not to think about Ronan instead.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Adam and Ronan + four mornings</p>
            </blockquote>





	Allow Me to Exaggerate a Memory or Two

Monmouth Manufacturing, Adam thought, was the stuff of dreams. Quite literally. When the sun rose through the fractured windows over Gansey’s handmade Henrietta, it was impossible to ignore the fact that the abandoned factory had been converted into a veritable playground for two very different types of dreamers: Ronan, who could wake up with his desires in his palms, and Gansey, who was smart and curious (and wealthy) enough to go looking for them.

When Adam let himself quietly into the factory on a Sunday morning, Gansey was still asleep. He was being watched closely by Noah, who did not cast a shadow on the sun-drenched floorboards. How Gansey could stay sleeping with a pair of eyes and a flood of gold on him was a mystery to Adam. How he could sleep through Ronan, who slammed out of his bedroom like he was fleeing from the cops, was even more of a mystery. Ronan didn’t seem to notice or care that Adam was still treading sunlight by the door, but he did point a stern finger at Noah to move away from the rumpled bed. Noah held up his pale palms and stepped back.

Every footstep of Ronan’s was loud and uncompromising as he gathered his various bits of armor from around the wide space. Chainsaw, quiet except for the rustle of her wings, tried to keep up with him and was rebuked every time Ronan crouched down to fish his tie out from under the couch, or bent over to lace up his shoes.

Noah hooked his cold chin over Adam’s shoulder. “You’re early,” he said quietly. Adam wasn’t sure if Noah had actually spoken the words or just put them in his head. He shrugged.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he replied.

The words made Ronan turn around and sneer at him. His eyes were dark– either he had been punched in the face or he hadn’t slept either, and it disturbed Adam to realize that either option was equally likely. His own face currently held evidence of both. “It’s a bit late to be asking Gansey for a bedtime story, Parrish,” Ronan mocked. His tone was sharp but the words were still pitched low.

“Get fucked, Lynch,” Adam said easily as he jerked his chin up. “We’re picking up Blue and driving into the mountains today, you know that.”

Ronan cut another sneer across his face as he knotted his tie. Adam had never seen anyone pull of a perfect Windsor knot with so much disdain. “At least I won’t be the one putting up with Gansey’s shitty driving,” Ronan said. Chainsaw finally managed to land on his shoulder and Ronan reached up to run one hand down her spine; as soon as he finished she took off and went to preen on Gansey’s desk.

Adam watched as Ronan stalked across the room towards him but didn’t move. He stayed still until the other boy was toe-to-toe with him and staring him down with an insolent look. Adam had to keep his chin tipped up to not break eye contact; he wanted many things, but in that moment what he wanted most was to be tall enough to make Ronan look up at him.

“You’re in my way, Parrish,” Ronan said quietly.

Warmth bloomed in Adam’s face. He didn’t say anything, and he didn’t blink, but he did take one calculated step to the side so that Ronan could walk out the door unimpeded.

Ronan threw him a mocking salute. “I’ll make sure to say a prayer for you,” he said, and it sounded like a threat. Then he was out the door and pounding his way down the stairs with the devotion of a child on Christmas morning. Adam sighed and looked back towards the bed to see Gansey blinking at him over the edge of his comforter.

Not as deep a sleeper as Adam had thought, then.

“Is he okay with us going without him today?”

Gansey shrugged his tan shoulders. “I offered to wait until the service was over,” he said. He sounded far too weary for a man who was still lying in bed. The sunlight lit up the edges of his hair a harsh gold, like a crown. “He offered a very creatively constructed response. I chose to take it as a no.”

Adam snorted and rubbed the back of his neck. He was nervous like this, faced with early-morning Gansey and with the promise of early-morning Blue looming on the horizon. He tried not to think about Ronan instead. He said, “He seemed angrier than usual.” 

This was untrue. Ronan’s anger was a simmering beast that always shone out of his eyes and got itself caught between his teeth. What Adam meant was that Ronan’s anger seemed more visible than usual. It had lurked on the surface of his skin, where anyone who got too close could be burned by it.

Gansey was very quiet. Then he rubbed one finger over his bottom lip and said, “I think he was out most of the night with Kavinsky.”

*

The first thing Adam saw when he woke up was Ronan’s face, creased in anger even though half of it was pressed into a pillow.

Adam had to sit up and breath for several moments before he remembered why he had one very unconscious Ronan Lynch on his floor. It came back in dark flashes: a late night hunting on the ley line; Ronan’s growled offer of a drive home; Adam’s weary offer of a pillow and a patch of floorboards. The continued presence of Ronan’s body was the only thing that let Adam know the other boy had accepted.

He had reached a point last night, apparently, where he had become too tired to remember any more details.

A closer inspection revealed that Ronan must have been sleeping fitfully throughout the night, because a small pile of objects was scattered next to him that could only have been plucked from his dreams. Adam wondered if Ronan ever slept through an entire night, or if he always had to roll over and make sure whatever was in his hands was benign. Adam wondered if Ronan ever had a night where he didn’t dream.

He wondered if Kavinsky had made that impossible.

When Adam was sitting down, there was a four-inch gap between his ankles and the hem of his pajama pants. Standing, the gap shrunk to three. Adam carefully stepped over Ronan and padded across the tiny space in his bare feet to make coffee as quietly as he could.

One of the dream objects, resting just beyond the reach of Ronan’s fingertips, was a book.

Adam felt that he had given up enough of his lives already, to his jobs, his school, his friends, Cabeswater; curiosity, surely, would not be the thing to kill him now. He kept glancing at the book as he poured the coffee into a chipped white mug and carried it back over to his bed.

He sat down on the edge of the mattress. He looked at Ronan’s face (which was a bit like looking into the face of a sleeping lion). He took a sip of coffee. Then he leaned forward and carefully picked up the book.

If Adam’s curiosity made him a thief, then Ronan’s caution made him a vault. The book seemed to be written entirely in the strange dream-language that Adam had seen only once before, on the sixth side of Ronan’s puzzle box. He couldn’t decipher it. He couldn’t even find the structure of the sentences, or any cognates that would link it to English, or Latin, or his smattering of middle-school French. It was entirely unique. The markings on each page were strange and lyrical, despite being incomprehensible, and it was not bizarre to Adam at all that such a thing had come from the mind of Ronan Lynch.

Something in the air changed. Adam looked up warily to see that Ronan was holding a bundle of star-shaped flowers in one hand. His body was still, but he had to be waking up, caught in the frozen paralysis that always occurred after he picked things from his dreams. Adam didn’t bother putting the book down. He didn’t mind being caught.

When Ronan’s eyes did flutter open, the first thing he did was cup his free hand around the soft white flowers in his grip. Then his gaze shifted up and caught on Adam. His entire body stiffened.

Ronan had not looked peaceful in his sleep, but Adam had not realized how comparatively relaxed his body had been until he was faced with this newly-awake, weaponized version. It made a wretched amount of sense, for him to be wary of someone watching him wake up. 

Adam took another drink of coffee and didn’t bother looking away. He wasn’t a threat. He was very conscious of the four visible inches of his ankles.

They didn’t seem to bother Ronan. He stared Adam down before holding one hand out imperiously for the coffee cup. Adam took one last drink and handed it over.

“You were dreaming,” he said.

Ronan didn’t need to swear at him; his eyebrows alone could manage. The only thing he actually said was, “Did I wake you up?” Adam shook his head. 

Ronan’s eyes found the book on the edge of the bed. Adam watched Ronan’s mouth for one moment, on the same edge of the coffee cup where Adam’s had been.

“I need to go to work,” Adam said out loud. Ronan could take his Saturdays to sleep or race or farm or plot murder, but Adam needed them. He would come home tired and hot and smelling of grease but at least he would come home where it was silent. At least he would come home knowing he had done as much as he could. That was safe. That was right. That was far away from Ronan with flowers and Adam’s coffee mug in his hands.

Ronan’s expression was inscrutable (a Gansey word if ever there was one). He took a long sip of Adam’s coffee and then made the long journey from the floor to his full standing height.

When he left, he did not take the book or the flowers with him.

*

“You need to go to class,” Gansey said sternly. Ronan gave him a look so filthy that Adam felt like he should recoil on Gansey’s behalf, but instead he just kept trudging over the Aglionby lawn with his hands in his pockets.

There was mist around the stately buildings of Aglionby, which gave an even more classic tilt to the groups of uniformed boys milling around outside. Adam was not thinking about their privileges and their accents. He was thinking about Persephone. At his side, Gansey and Ronan continued to bicker.

For once, Adam almost agreed with Ronan. They were closer than they had ever been to finding Glendower, and shouldn’t that have been their priority? Persephone had died; shouldn’t that have been their priority?

“You just need to make it to graduation,” Gansey was saying. Ronan was sneering and snarling at him but he hadn’t turned around and gone back to his car, so Adam assumed the other boy would be coming with them to Latin. It was a small compensation. Latin was surely the most useful class to them now.

Ronan was the best of the three of them, when it came down to speaking it. When it came to Cabeswater’s trees. Anyone who did not know Ronan very well would not have been able to reconcile those dark eyes and that cruel mouth with the single-minded determination with which he pursued Latin, but Adam knew Ronan very well. He knew those eyes and that mouth. To him, it made sense, in the same magical way that the focus of the ley line made sense on its path through Henrietta.

“Gansey!”

Adam pulled himself out of his thoughts to find himself alone with a moody Ronan, who stared at Gansey’s back as the other boy strode across the lawn to talk to Henry Cheng. Adam stopped walking and bumped his shoulder against Ronan’s. Without looking, Ronan cuffed the back of his head.

It was difficult to stand there in the Aglionby dawn with everything they knew. With everything Adam knew. He could still see Gansey, powerful and impeccable in his uniform, across the grass. It was a shock to the system to remember what was inevitably coming. Adam kept his hands in his pockets so that Ronan wouldn’t see them shake.

Ronan had a slip of red ribbon in his hands that he kept winding around his fingers in loops and knots. It had to be a dream thing, though Adam couldn’t say how he knew. Perhaps he was too familiar with Ronan’s dream things. He had watched them bleed. He had watched them die. The red of the ribbon was familiar.

It was not a morning for pride and for ambition. Adam felt cold. It was as if Noah was pressing his chilly hands all up the length of his spine. Maura had returned, but Persephone was dead; Greenmantle was gone, but at what cost to Ronan?

“You coming, Parrish?”

Adam looked up. Ronan was walking backwards towards the building that held their Latin classes with both of his expressive eyebrows raised. The red ribbon was nowhere to be seen; Adam wondered if he had imagined it.

He shook his head and told himself that the dull weariness at the base of his skull was nothing but a headache. Then he followed Ronan inside. They still had time. They still had time. They still had time.

*

Adam set an alarm for 6 a.m. and woke up before it went off anyway– it was almost like a dream, where the blue-dark of the morning felt early to him. Not everything he wanted, but one step closer. The wooden floorboards were very cold under his feet as he got out of bed. They were cold in the way that Noah used to be cold, even when Blue was near. Adam shivered as he put on his socks.

He got dressed in the dark, trying to be quiet, and made his way carefully to the kitchen of the Barns. The coffee maker (magical) was already brewing; the toaster (magical) was already toasting; the milk in the refrigerator was not magical and had also gone bad, but Adam just laughed to himself as he threw it out. Drinking his coffee black was no tragedy.

The clock was threatening a familiar time as he finished his coffee and ate the last of his toast. He placed them carefully in the sink, beside a spoon that looked as though it had been bitten in half. Adam had to stifle another laugh.

Then he returned to the bedroom and leaned very carefully over the side of the bed. Under his hand was the soft, clean line of the sheet and the softer surface of the pillow, and then the warm curve of Ronan’s neck. Adam pressed his palm to the back of Ronan’s buzzed scalp and bent down to kiss him on the forehead.

One of Ronan’s hands emerged from the tangle of blankets to wrap itself around Adam’s wrist and tug it upwards until Ronan could kiss his boyfriend’s knuckles.

“I have to go back to school today,” Adam said very quietly. Then, “Ronan.”

Ronan blinked open his dark eyes and looked up at him. He had been deeply, peacefully asleep, the sort that left him calm and warm, the sort that he said was like slipping beneath the waves of an impossible ocean. “Adam,” he said. He kissed Adam’s knuckles again. “Say goodbye to Opal.”

“I will.”

Ronan nodded, satisfied. He would never ask, but Adam leaned down and kissed him softly on the mouth anyway. Ronan’s fingers tightened around his wrist. This was a soft, early thing, between a dreamer and a magician too tired for words. Ronan was very warm.

When Adam sat up, the morning sun was just beginning to pour through the window of the room. It cast amber lines across Ronan’s face and lit one of his dark eyes into a glistening gold. Adam pressed his hand fondly to Ronan’s sharp shoulder and then stood up.

“My exams are at the end of the month,” he said to Ronan’s watchful gaze. “Then I’ll be back.”

“I know,” Ronan said.

Adam smiled at him. This was another delicate, magical thing. It was too soft for so much that they had seen.

It was early in the morning when Adam left, but he drove with the windows down and the cold, damp air spilling into the car and threading itself through his hair. When he came home in a month, Henry and Gansey and Blue would be there, and Ronan and Opal would be waiting for him. Ronan, still made of too many teeth and claws and ink. Ronan, who still woke up in the morning with flowers in his hands. Ronan, who slept soundly as Adam drove further and further away from the Barns.

The rising sun was just a drop in the corner of Adam’s eye as he guided Ronan’s car along the sprawling roads of Virginia on his way back to school. He could tell it was going to be a beautiful day.

**Author's Note:**

> I felt like the post-TRK era was a good time to try my hand at writing in this fandom for the first time. On tumblr I'm [kvothes,](http://kvothes.tumblr.com/tagged/x) come and say hello!


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